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The Principles of Aesthetics
- Narrated by: Terry Rose, Jason Leikam
- Length: 13 hrs
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Publisher's summary
The Principles of Aesthetics can be considered the definitive work on aesthetics, the philosophy of art, beauty, and taste. It is the result of a series of lectures given by Dewitt H. Parker, and gives a comprehensive review of a truly extensive subject. Every person has some sense of the beautiful and the ugly. We all admire certain images, combinations of sound, taste, smell, or feeling. But where does this enjoyment come from? If our tastes were all alike, we could find precise formulae that define the beautiful and discover the keys to the nature of art. But our tastes differ from one person to the next, and even from one moment to the next. This is what makes beauty a mystery. Art is a grasping at the intangible reality that surrounds and transcends our attempts to order the world. This is what makes the philosophy of aesthetics so fascinating. At the very least, it gives us insight into our nature as human beings. At best, it can let us glimpse the nature of truth beyond reason and intention.
It has been said that art imitates nature. Perhaps some ephemeral quality of the natural world is reflected in our sense of beauty and taste. The philosophy of aesthetics is focused on these questions. It delves into the mysterious pool from which artists and poets derive their inspiration. With this piece, Dewitt H. Parker gives us a beautiful and thorough introduction into a field that points towards the mysteries of the human experience. A summary precedes the full narration, giving a biography of the author, as well as an overview, synopsis, and analysis of the work.
The summary is capped by a brief look at the historical context of Dewitt's work, as well as the criticism and social impact it evoked.
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On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
- By: Arthur Schopenhauer
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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There is a cause, or a reason, behind everything that happens. This is the fundamental view behind the classical proposition the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which, in 1813, Schopenhauer chose as his subject for further examination in his doctoral dissertation On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason....
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I’ve enjoyed this program
- By M.Biblioswine on 04-23-20
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The Discarded Image
- An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
- By: C. S. Lewis
- Narrated by: Richard Elwood
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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The Discarded Image paints a lucid picture of the medieval worldview, providing the historical and cultural background to the literature of the middle ages and renaissance. It describes the 'image' discarded by later years as "the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organization of their theology, science, and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental model of the universe". This, Lewis' last book, has been hailed as "the final memorial to the work of a great scholar and teacher and a wise and noble mind".
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I hope more of Lewis's scholastic stuff is coming
- By James on 04-01-21
By: C. S. Lewis
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The Soul of the World
- By: Roger Scruton
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Soul of the World, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton defends the experience of the sacred against today’s fashionable forms of atheism. He argues that our personal relationships, moral intuitions, and aesthetic judgments hint at a transcendent dimension that cannot be understood through the lens of science alone. To be fully alive - and to understand what we are - is to acknowledge the reality of sacred things.
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"Against Reductionism"
- By Edmund Schilvold on 10-08-15
By: Roger Scruton
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Civilization and Its Discontents, Totem and Taboo
- By: Sigmund Freud
- Narrated by: Martyn Swain
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is remembered as the father of psychoanalysis. Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) is one of his key works, written three decades after his seminal book The Interpretation of Dreams. In it he considers the conflict between the needs of the individual acting both egotistically and altruistically in the pursuit of happiness and the myriad demands of civilised society and the ensuing tensions this clash of needs and demands generates.
By: Sigmund Freud
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Why We Are Restless
- On the Modern Quest for Contentment
- By: Benjamin Storey, Jenna Silber Storey
- Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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We live in an age of unprecedented prosperity, yet everywhere we see signs that our pursuit of happiness has proven fruitless. Dissatisfied, we seek change for the sake of change - even if it means undermining the foundations of our common life. In Why We Are Restless, Benjamin and Jenna Storey offer a profound and beautiful reflection on the roots of this malaise and examine how we might begin to cure ourselves.
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Good primer.
- By Chris on 09-29-21
By: Benjamin Storey, and others
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The Hedgehog and the Fox (Second Edition)
- An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History
- By: Isaiah Berlin, Henry Hardy - editor, Michael Ignatieff - foreword
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 2 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy of history, the subject of the epilogue to War and Peace. Although there have been many interpretations of the adage, Berlin uses it to mark a fundamental distinction between human beings who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system.
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The Fox Who Tried To Be A Hedgehog
- By Rich S. on 12-14-21
By: Isaiah Berlin, and others
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Modern Man in Search of a Soul
- By: Carl Jung
- Narrated by: Christopher Prince
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Modern Man in Search of a Soul is the classic introduction to the thought of Carl Jung. Along with Freud and Adler, Jung was one of the chief founders of modern psychiatry. In this book, Jung examines some of the most contested and crucial areas in the field of analytical psychology: dream analysis, the primitive unconscious, and the relationship between psychology and religion.
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Could have almost been an automated text reader
- By Chicken Love on 04-24-15
By: Carl Jung
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On Augustine
- By: Rowan Williams
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Since his retirement as Archbishop of Canterbury and his return to academic life (Master of Magdalene College Cambridge), Rowan Williams has demonstrated a massive new surge of intellectual energy. In this new audiobook, he turns his attention to St Augustine. St Augustine not only shaped the development of Western theology, he also made a major contribution to political theory ( The City of God) and, through his Confessions, to the understanding of human psychology.
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thoughtful take.
- By Michael McGuire on 04-17-22
By: Rowan Williams
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The Art of the Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Linda Asher - translator
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Kundera brilliantly examines the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Musil. He is especially penetrating on Hermann Broch, and his exploration of the world of Kafka's novels vividly reveals the comic terror of Kafka's bureaucratized universe. Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the postpsychological novel.
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Informative and Inspiring
- By Mo on 11-27-21
By: Milan Kundera, and others
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The Gay Science (The Joyful Wisdom)
- By: Friedrich Nietzsche
- Narrated by: Michael Lunts
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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The Gay Science (The Joyful Wisdom) is one of Nietzsche's greatest books. His wonderfully fertile mind roams over mankind, his thoughts, his emotions, his behaviour and his weaknesses with remarkable clarity, with insight - but also with humour!In this work are 383 separate paragraphs, some short, some long, but all singular observations - the epitome of his famous aphoristic style. 'Morality is the herd instinct in the individual.'
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I am now a full-fledged fan of Nietzsche
- By RS on 02-24-18
What listeners say about The Principles of Aesthetics
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Philosopher King
- 02-13-17
The Why of Beauty Explored!
What did you love best about The Principles of Aesthetics?
Before I get into this, I have to share my bias. I’ve always been in the camp that thinks art can’t be broken down into objective intellectual terms. So I found some resistance when listening to this piece, but only at the start. Parker explores beauty from the angle of the philosopher and psychologist, sure, but he also has a clear passion for art itself and has immersed himself in the subject for this passion’s sake. He does provide some definitions of art and beauty, though he explores these definitions from a subjective angle as well as the more stolid and uptight angle preferred by some earlier aesthetic philosophers.
With regard to the analytical breakdown, Parker describes each piece of art as a combination of sensation and feeling. He explores how different forms of art approach sensation, like tones for music, color and line for painting, letters and words for literature, and how this sensation can be used to convey both immediate feelings, and specific ideas. The psychological element of this bit is fascinating to me, as there is a specific feeling conveyed by the color red, for example, or by a certain pitch or tone. I feel that some of the best artists have an instinctive understanding of this, using our innate response to color, line, form, and tone to evoke gut-level feelings. The neat thing about it is that these feelings are vague but definite, having a clear impact, but at a subconscious level. Even more interesting is that they must be employed with the grace and intuition of a master. To attempt to use lines colors and forms intentionally to generate these feelings can come off as clumsy. Subtlety is the key.
Parker also explores how these basic elements of a piece are combined to produce definite images, with convey even more specific feelings or ideas. While our innate response to certain colors or tones may have its roots in universal human nature, the response we have to specific ideas or suggestive imagery is rooted in our personal associations. This speaks towards the difference in response we feel when encountering a piece of art. None of us has the same associations or exactly the same way of thinking or feeling about the world. Art is a beautiful union of the subjective and the objective, or a meeting of the inner world of the artist with our own inner world.
Parker takes this as far as providing a standard, “a two-part criterion for the interpretation of art.” Now, I’m not so sure about this. His criterion is first: does the art express the artist’s intention? Even parker recognizes that we can’t be sure of this. And most of the artists that I have known weren’t so clear about their intention when creating a piece, and sometimes even after. So this bit seems too intellectual and left-brained for the subject of aesthetics.
The second aspect of the criterion is: does our interpretation lead us away from the sensual medium or towards it? I’m even less certain of this than the first part. Parker’s reasoning is that the value of a piece cannot be rooted solely in the subjective, that if it is only our interpretation that makes it beautiful, then it is not one of those pieces of beauty that has universal appeal. I suppose I can see this, but I’m not sure anything has universal appeal. We learn our lenses, the filters through which we view the world. We can learn to see beauty in things that might have been nondescript or even ugly to us before. And the learning of these filters is largely invisible to us.
Either way, Parker goes on to explore the qualities that make a piece truly beautiful, and in this respect, I really enjoyed his breakdown. He works with Plato’s definition of harmony, simplicity, and proportion. Now, as the description stands, it leaves much to be desired. But Parker explores each of these qualities, applying them to a number of different mediums. He looks at simplicity as unity, the capacity for a piece to hang together as a unit, rather than as a collection of different sensations, images, or ideas. Harmony can come in a variety of ways, through a collection of elements that work together, or through an opposition of elements that balance one another. I suppose what really appeals to me here is his exploration of the psychology and effect of each of these styles of unity or harmony. However, I think that these ideas will be more effective for the art critic than for the artist.
Once Parker explores the fundamental nature of art in itself, as well as the subjective nature of taste, he addresses specifically a number of different mediums. Music, poetry, prose, painting, and architecture. I have to say that there were quite a few insights in this section of the work. I’m fairly familiar with literature, painting and music, but I had never really taken a good look at architecture. Once again, the link between the structure of a building and the subjective influence upon someone within it is fascinating to me. Also, although I’m willing to grant that architecture is art, I feel that an intellectual understanding of the subjective impact can be of use to the architect or engineer, should they choose to take the human effect into account. These are understandings that can be effectively employed by a builder to intentionally craft the aesthetics of their work.
The final sections of the work explore the function of art itself. Here, I have to give Parker credit. Although he explores the purpose of art from the perspective of a “rational man,” his passion for beauty and the aesthetic shine through. He speaks as a lover of art, rather than as a cold and analytical philosopher. Art as a means of uniting with the larger sphere of life, as a method to rediscover meaning in a modern world which has become stale and empty. He views the aesthetic principle as something that can guide societal conduct more effectively than any form of morality. I might not fully agree with him on all counts, but his expression of this was enough to win me over. I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in art, either for purposes of creation or appreciation. I feel, just as Parker intends, it can expand the appreciation of the enthusiast and spark inspiration in the artist.
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7 people found this helpful
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- milsorgen
- 01-04-23
The Beautiful Experience
Beauty is often neglected in today's world but even more neglected is the study of aesthetics and aesthetic experience. This book serves as an invaluable resource for anyone looking to take a survey of the field with text written in our modern era, leaving it more approachable than many of the philosophical texts that form the underpinnings of it all. Even if you go no further in aesthetics than this book it behooves you to explore this title for it offers much more than any single title has a right to.
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-02-19
Amazing performance
Thanks to author and narrator for this gem! Great and informative insight for any creative person
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